Warner Bros. Offers Full Refunds for Batman: Arkham Knight on PC

With a less than stellar release when originally made available on the Steam distribution service, Batman: Arkham Knight continues to have a rough time with the game’s re-release on October 28th. Despite critical acclaim on the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, technical issues still plague Rocksteady Studios and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s foray on PC versions of the title.

As a result, Warner Bros. will offer a full, unconditional refund for Arkham Knight, “regardless of how long you have played the product.” That last bit is especially important, as Steam players are only allotted a maximum play time of two hours before Steam refuses to refund the cost of the game.

The fourth main installment in the Batman: Arkham series, Arkham Knight was released on the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on June 23rd, 2015. While the title received rave reviews on the PS4 and Xbox One, PC players were met with multiple issues from stuttering to crashing and unreliable FPS, even for people running the game on high-end video cards (e.g. Geforce GTI Titan, Geforce GTI 980 Ti). Gamers took to writing reviews casting the title in a less than positive light, and Steam pulled the game from sale a day later. Arkham Knight was only re-released on Steam on October 28th, but the issues persisted.

This isn’t the first time that Rocksteady Studios and Warner Bros. have had issues porting their Batman games. Back in 2011, Arkham City was met with similar performance issues when DirectX 11 was enabled. One of the issues with Arkham Knight may reside in the fact there was only a 12-person team from Iron Galaxy Studios responsible for the port from console to PC, an astonishingly small team for the huge scope of the game and in comparison to the 160 member team at Rocksteady Studios responsible for Arkham Knight’s development.

Hopefully, Rocksteady and Warner Bros. learn from this experience, despite this being the last of the Batman: Arkham titles. Some fans might stick it out with the two studios, but it’s a safe bet that plenty have already sent their requests to get their money back in spite of Warner Bros.’ promise to keep in touch with the player-base and let fans know what can and can’t be fixed.

Batman: Arkham Knight was initially released on June 23, 2015, and re-released October 28, 2015.